Summary:
Expand your digital life by storing much more photos, videos, music and files on the LaCie mini Hard Drive & HUB, specially designed to fit perfectly with the Mac mini. Now you can connect all of your hardware peripherals at once - like your iSight, mouse, keyboard, web cam, camera, video recorder, speakers and other USB hard drives. Easily back up your computer or upgrade storage capacity, whether on a Mac mini, or another desktop or laptop computer. This multiple-connection companion is plug & play, cross-platform and ultra-quiet. Its sturdy metal casing provides advanced heat dissipation and its unique four-corner crown is designed to provide cooling airflow between stacked drives to protect against overheating. [List Price: $200-$430]

Err, I arsed up....its not the hub one. I got the older one without hub....still V fast and silent and a perfect match for the mini.......To be honest, using a bt keyboard and mouse, I don't need the ports and I think having them on the side will spoil the clean lines.....(I used the ports on the back of my cinema display if I need them )

Do you find this much faster than your internal hard drive was? I like the idea of silence, but I'm concerned about heat (my computer's on about 14 hours a day, sometimes longer), and I've also read poor reports regarding LaCie's aftersales service.

I got the 300GB with hub last week. It was a complete doddle to install, plug it in, wait a few seconds ...... and there it was, all 30GB of it. Marvelous!

The thing that attracted me to the Lacie was its aesthetic fit with the Mac Mini - nothing else looks like it, and it just fits beautifully. I'll even forgive them for the huge Lacie logo embossed onto the front of the aluminium case.

Operation is very quick and quiet, it matches the host system in every possible way.

The hub ports on the side do not bother me that much. They will be untidy if used to the full, but then that seems to be the case with USB/Firewire anyway - a horrendous birdsnest of cables lying all over the desk!

I can highly recommend the Lacie over and above all of the others - unless of course you need the higher disk capacities available on some of these.

I regret not buying the LaCie mini instead of a miniStack. I saw one in person, and they are NICE! I think it would be cool for Apple to put those crowns like the LaCie minis have on the iTV for stacking. I mean if it's same size as the Mac mini and all.

Last edited by devo on Thu Nov 09, 2006 11:31 pm; edited 1 time in total

I worked in Apple retail for about 4 years, and we carried LaCie drives amongst others. To me, LaCie products were always fairly solid, well built devices. They used good quality materials to build the enclosure, and quality chipsets for the disk controller. They weren't perfectly reliable, but in data storage, nothing is. I've had to call LaCie customer service a number of times, to help customers, and to return products to be repaired/replaced, and I was always pleased with their support. They had well trained staff, who spoke clear English, and if you requested a specific person, they could either call you back, or send you an email with a time to call them.

With that said, they are a bit pricey. I personally only own one LaCie external drive (an older D2 drive). Being on a budget to afford school right now, spending an extra $50 premium on a LaCie product just isn't something I want to do. Currently I have more time than money to troubleshoot problems.

The only other issue I have with LaCie is not specific to them, but to all pre-packaged external drive manufacturers. I am a big fan of Seagate 3.5" drives. Right now, my external storage consists of all the major brands of drives (except Samsung, although they're really not major), and in my experience, Seagates are a nice compromise between speed, noise and heat, and in my experience, good reliability. When you go with a pre-packaged drive manufacturer, you sacrifice the ability to choose your own brand of drive. The tradeoff is having one location to get support though._________________MacBook Pro 1.83GHz Core Duo, 2GB RAM, 250GB HD, Dell 802.11n card, 1.4TB external
MacBook 1.83GHz Core Duo, 2GB RAM, 60GB HD
iMac 1.83GHz Core Duo, 2GB RAM, 160GB HD, 1TB external, EyeTV Hybrid

I noticed something disturbing over the weekend for the first time. The crowns on top of my LaCie mini are starting to scuff up the finish on the bottom corners of my Mac mini from rubbing together. The finish is also starting to wear off on top of the crowns. I tried to take a picture, but it didn't come out good. Has anyone else noticed this happening?

Right now, my external storage consists of all the major brands of drives (except Samsung, although they're really not major)...

Why do you say Samsung isn't a major brand of drive? I would guess that in sales, they're in the same league as Western Digital and Hitachi, at least worldwide. While I know that Apple doesn't use them, most mail order houses stock them and at least one lists them among the major sellers. Personally, I think Samsung is one of the best, if not the best brand, from the perpective of low noise and power usage. Those are important qualities to me. (Seagate is good, too; I have one in my Cube at present.)

Why do you say Samsung isn't a major brand of drive? I would guess that in sales, they're in the same league as Western Digital and Hitachi, at least worldwide. While I know that Apple doesn't use them, most mail order houses stock them and at least one lists them among the major sellers. Personally, I think Samsung is one of the best, if not the best brand, from the perpective of low noise and power usage. Those are important qualities to me. (Seagate is good, too; I have one in my Cube at present.)

Does anyone know of sales figures for the various HD manufacturers? I did a Google search and didn't come up with anything.

For 2005, Seagate held 28.3% of the HD market, Western Digital with 17.4%, Maxtor with 14% (this was before the Seagate acquisition), Hitachi with 15.4%, Toshiba at 8.9%, Samsung at 8.7%, and Fujitsu at 6.3% ("others" accounted for 1.2%). Source.

So yes, Samsung is a big name (it's not one of the "others"), but with around half the marketshare of the other ones I mentioned, it's not one of the big dogs.